Regarding recent events on Italian Wikipedia
Today the volunteers of the Italian Wikipedia community made the decision to replace all of Italian Wikipedia with a message to readers about a law (PDF in Italian) being discussed before the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament. The message outlines the viewpoints of the Italian Wikipedia community, and provides details about the proposed bill, and how it threatens the ability to openly collaborate in the sharing of knowledge. This is certainly a decision the Italian Wikipedia community did not take lightly.
The Wikimedia Foundation stands with our volunteers in Italy who are challenging the recently drafted “DDL intercettazioni” (or Wiretapping Bill) bill in Italy. This bill would hinder the work of projects like Wikipedia: open, volunteer-driven, and collaborative spaces dedicated to sharing high-quality knowledge, not to mention the ability for all users of the internet to engage in democratic, free speech opportunities.
Wikipedians the world over pride themselves on their ability to rapidly remove false information from their project. Wikipedia has established methods to receive complaints or concerns from individuals or organizations and a strong system exists to remove incorrect or false information, and if necessary to remove complete articles in an effort to prevent vandalism. For Wikipedians, there is no value nor need for this proposed legislation.
The Wikimedia Foundation supports the rights of all people to access our free knowledge content everywhere in the world, and we equally support the work of our editors to collaborate in the production of this free knowledge without the spectre of sanctioned punishment or attacks towards their work.
Jay Walsh, Communications
As a user of and contributor to Wikipedia in several languages, including Italian, I wonder why the Italian Wikipedia could not be relocated to Switzerland (possibly as “HelvetoPedia”), where Italian is one of the 4 official languages, possibly through a “mirror site”.
Surely some Swiss university – I’m thinking of Lugano University, which is officially the “Università della Svizzera italiana – could help in this.
There are also two microstates, the Vatican City and San Marino, where Italian is the official language.
The Italian language is too important culturally to be tied exclusively to the vicissitudes of the Republic of Italy.
I’m thinking of its importance for the Italian diaspora, which is equivalent in numbers to the population of Italy, but also in the other countries that use Romance languages, where it is widely studied and read (cf. the first comment in this series, by a Portuguese-language user).
But Italian has always had a good following in other countries such as the English-speaking (remember Shakespeare) and German-speaking (Goethe) countries, not to mention countries like Hungary and Poland, which have historical ties to Italy.
Lastly, perhaps something similar should be done with all the Wikis that have the good fortune to be spoken in more than one country, e.g. mirror sites in Portugal and Brazil.
As Italian, I completely agree that the bill would – in its current form – to bring chaos to the publication of material, but I absolutely disagree with this decision taken by some users, especially because it is denied the opportunity to reply or comment.
As Martinez said, other forms of protest could be more valid. This will reinforce the arguments of the detractors of Wikipedia.
There’s nothing ridiculous at all. The bill is going to force *every* content published IN Italy or BY italian people (this means virtually worldwide, FYI) to be removed just by a simple request *without passing any trial*. Stop.
This means that the italian (language?) content of Wikipedia and furthermore every content of Wikipedia made by an italian person could be censored within 48hrs.
In fact, there is no involvement by WMF in political activism. WMF’s (passive) involvement points to maintain free knowledge worldwide. Everyone knows China’s censorship-style. The introducement of censorship in EU requires a protest. How, why and when have been discussed in the it.wiki community to prevent the passing of the bill. Somebody could say this happened too early, but if the bill passes, then any protest would bee too late.
At last, facebook, twitter & media are each only private organizations, maybe useful for broadcasting, but should we gonna cry to another’s mummy because your neighbour is going to break our toy? I think not.
WMF’s and Wikipedia’s point of view can NOT be neutral when free KNOWLEDGE is going to be harmed.
for the guys that thinks stuff like “shut-down of Italian wikipedia BEFORE any formal procedure is a biased, anacceptalbe, super-duperPOV disgusting completely political action and a severe irreversible damage of Wikipedia’s basic principles” is BETTER that stop criticism and (re)start to read wikipedia!
It’s 14 MONTHS that inside it.wiki the “ddl intercettazioni” is criticized and analyzed.. and are mentioned various proposal (included the “shutdown” ), with voting procedure.
See (2010-2011)
http://it.mobile.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bar/Discussioni/Protesta_di_it.wiki_per_il_DDL_intercettazioni:_tiriamo_le_fila and its links.
See oct 2011
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bar/Discussioni/Comma_29_e_Wikipedia
First i would like to politely ask to whomever said we in Italy are using Wikipedia as a mean of polarized political pressure to apologize. You’re insulting our intelligence and our understanding of the whole wikipedia project.
Second i want to remark that this bill is going to hit wikipedia in his very essence. This law will give to everyone (regardless of nationality) the power to impose a personal point of view on any wikipedia page written by italians, and/or residing in an italian server. And everyone could do that without engaging any trial or appealing to any court. Not only: they could also impose the “correct” text they want to see in Wikipedia, without no further edits by anyone and even when there are neutral and official sources stating the opposite of what the “offended” person want to see in Wikipedia.
@Simon Q
Oh really??? ”Wikipedia’s point of view can NOT be neutral”?? Congratulation sir. The abolition of one of most basic principles is just disgusting. Wikipedia isn’t a state neither a meatworld community, and the only sure thing is that italian wikipedia will NEVER be deleted. If Italy decides to censor its internet content by removing the truth then simply it might be transfered somewhere else.
Secondly, wikipedia ISN’T FREE KNOWLEDGE. It is was one of the best free knowledge projects.
Ladies and gentlemen I’m from Greece and Greeks have lived the syndicalism by every aspect. The result? We have gone bankrupt! Just see the history of every such movement. What’s next? A protest against a war? A protest against China? A political involvement? And moreover: If wikipedians can decide and act politically via wikipedia, what will happen when THEY will want to control it? They will start deleting articles because they will want to be payed? If WMF allow this protest the only sure thing is the bankruptcy of wikipedia. It is MATHEMATICALLY SURE, and you will be able to do nothing to prevent it! As long as you are warned, the responsibility is yours. if you don’t believe just check it out .&-
I fully agree with the intentions of the protesters. It may seem a drastic measure but considering the severe consequences resulting from the stipulation of the Italian law it is justified. Of course, there would be many more occasions all over the world, where you could start protest. Defending rights, like the freedom of expression and opinion, is required in many parts of the world. Let them start here and say and do what is to be said and done. You have my support and solidarity.
About “manipulated wikipedia to act as a political platform” i’d like to draw attention to the difference between “politic / politics ” vs “party / political party”.
Isn’t a subtle difference.. ! The action of it.wiki IMHO it’s surely political ,BUT ISN’T politician party action, who divide stuff into left wing and right wing… it’s super-partes… it’s for free speech survival, for free knowledge without the spectre of sanctioned punishment or attacks towards their work, etc etc.
PS: sorry for spaghetti english
@Somebody
”Wikipedia’s point of view can NOT be neutral when free KNOWLEDGE is going to be harmed”*
free knowledge is the basis of wikipedia and you should learn to make quotes using the whole sentences – or the entire statement won’t make any sense (this is mere linguistics).
thank you.
more about FREE KNOWLEDGE: it is one of the FIVE PILLARS, best known with “Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute.”
@Federico Vittori: non esiste un “direttivo centrale di Wikipedia”. La sola affermazione potrebbe dimostrare quanto sei effettivamente coinvolto nel progetto :) Se invece intendevi “i vertici di WMF” e/o personalità comunque importanti nel mondo Wikimedia, mi spiace farti notare che oltre a questo post, Jimbo, Sue, Kat, Mike Godwin, e numerosi chapter ci hanno espresso solidarietà, non condanna. Inoltre la proposta di blocco è stata presente al Bar negli scorsi giorni e ha ricevuto chiaramente consenso (in caso contrario, sarebbe stato necessario ricorrere _almeno_ ai nostri sondaggi formali), potrai sincerartene presto, e sicuramente la tua opinione sarà gradita anche alla riapertura. Posso accogliere alcune critiche circa l’organizzazione, la comunicazione e via dicendo, ma detto questo, i canali soliti (IRC, mailing list) sono sempre aperti. Anche io non sono certamente felice per i metodi, ma l’alternativa era e rimane chiedere la chiusura del progetto, perché la legge è totalmente incompatibile con i nostri pilastri e obiettivi, come ben saprai.
Dear friends,
although many of you do not like the action made by the Italian Wikipedia community, I must tell you they did the correct choice.
Unfortunately, despite the fact you like it or not, this is the only way to protect both Wikipedia *AND* all people that contributed to write those pages, if that law will be approved.
And, as it has been said by “Emanuele S”, I do not accept that you think they are using Wikipedia for doing political activism, but I’m sure that’s not your fault: perhaps you are not simply aware about what this law is and what its effects will be.
This italian law is much worse then the image filter. Those, who agree with this law do not share any of the projexts basic ideas.
@Elitre: not only you are right. But this point was already explicit in the message published by wikipedia, therefore if Mr. Vittori insists on a “direttivo centrale di wikipedia” he has not read the message. This is how Italy work these days.
@everyone else: our premier sues journalists for telling the simple truth about his trials and his legal problems. There is no reason to wait for the bill to pass (besided, it’s a “decreto”, so it’s gonna pass no matter what). It’s just fair for wikipedia to be cautious about this. The fear that wikipedia is experiencing right now is the same fear I am experiencing about what I write on my twitter account.
@Vittori: write in English like everyone else, ok? It’s the whole point of this page. If you wanna write in Italian, do it on facebook on an Italian page.
Post Scriptum: I agree with the protest and its mode, We wont be made silent in a silent way.
Why do you allow trolls like Virgilio Machado to continually post comments on such threads despite the fact that he has been banned on numerous projects and mailing lists?
@Somebody: “If the content of Italian wikipedia is truthfull, documented and polite there is no, really NO REASON for italian justice to take any action.”
This statement makes sense with the current law, which always involves a third party to judge if the accusations have some ground.
With the *new* law, instead, this third party is removed: if a web site publishes some work regarding a person, he/she has the right to ask to the site owner to remove the content and to publish a rectification provided by him, *on the only basis that said person feels “offended” in some way by this content* (no check is required to see if the offending content is actually defamatory or non conforming to the truth).
Failure to comply to the request results in fines up to 12.000 €.
“If it does, this is CENSORSHIP! In this impossible case the whole wikipedia community will support italian counterparts of course without any hesitation.”
We already are in your “impossible case”. The new bill is currently being discussed in our parliament.
I’m Italian and I agree with Massimo and Pietro…
I think that for people that are not informed about the situation of the media in Italy, it is very difficult to completely understand the reasons of the Italian Wikipedian Community. Well, it think all will be clear if you know some Italian and you can read this article or you can find someone that could translate it for you:
http://www.iltempo.it/2011/10/05/1290705-wikipedia_protesta_meglio_treccani.shtml?refresh_ce
Soon after the Italian Wikipedia protest against the bill started, this article appered on “Il tempo”.
The first line of the article says: “La nuova legge sulle intercettazioni potrebbe avere un merito inaspettato: far scomparire Wikipedia”.
In Italian, it sound like this (I’m sorry for my bad English): “The new wiretapping bill could have an unexpected merit: let Wikipedia disappear”.
I find how so many people complain about closing down the italian Wikipedia, because it is a “political action”, quite funny. First of all, there is nothing apolitical either in substance or use in anything. Read that? A-NY-THING. If the italian Wikipedia had kept on as if nothing was going on, people would complain about their being either useful idiots (for not saying anything) or complacent censors (hey, they already say that about the librarians in the spanish Wikipedia and we Spaniards don’t even have this kind of law). If they had taken any action, even just providing the text as information on Wikipedia, they would have been (and actually have been) accused of being politicized. Sorry, it’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t issue. So if they decided to close down the italian Wikipedia for a day and you don’t like it, too bad: chances are that if they had done what you think was right, many other people would have complained. There are good choices, bad choices and non-choices. In this issue, bad choices are better than non-choices, and there are no good choices anyway.
Oh, if I didn’t make it clear enough, I think the choice was appropriate.
(Sorry for my english)
Please try to understand us(and my poor english :) ). The freedom of thinking, writing, saying everything is compromised because of this law. Wikipedia will be DIRECTLY DAMAGED by this, if anyone says “I don’t want this on internet” we will be FORCED to remove it. Even if it was the truth. What do you think about this?